On a PIP in Spain: the 33-day tariff, and why not to resign

No statutory PIP, and two routes it might be feeding

Spain has no legal concept of a performance improvement plan. A plan is imported practice, and legally it functions as the employer's attempt to build a proof file for one of two routes — or as pressure toward an exit.

The disciplinary route (art. 54.2.e of the Workers' Statute) requires a drop in performance that is continued, voluntary and significant, measured against normal or agreed output. If a court upholds it, there is no severance at all: only the finiquito, your accrued pay and holiday. The employer carries the burden and needs benchmarks: agreed objectives, your own prior periods, or comparable colleagues.

One practitioner analysis of 2024–25 rulings that favoured workers found that 43% turned on generic dismissal letters citing "low performance" with no documented prior objectives. A vague plan feeding a vague letter is a weak case, and weak cases get priced.

The objective route (art. 52.a) is ineptitud sobrevenida — a genuine, permanent, non-voluntary inability, often flagged by occupational health. Severance is 20 days per year capped at 12 months, with 15 days' notice, the compensation made available with the letter, and six paid hours a week to look for work during notice. Case law adds a duty to check for an alternative post.

The two routes are mutually exclusive by design: a voluntary decrease is disciplinary, a non-voluntary incapacity is objective. An employer arguing both at once is arguing neither.

Since November 2024 they have to hear you first

In November 2024 the Supreme Court changed its own doctrine of forty years. Before a despido disciplinario — the first of the two routes above — the employer has to give you the chance to answer the charges. It is called the audiencia previa, and it comes from Article 7 of Convention 158 of the International Labour Organization, which the court now applies directly in Spain rather than waiting for a Spanish law to repeat it.

The article says an employment relationship should not be ended for reasons related to the worker's conduct or performance before the worker has been offered the chance to defend themselves against the charges made against them, unless the employer cannot reasonably be asked to give that chance.

Three things about it are worth having.

It comes before the decision, not after. The chance to answer has to reach whoever holds the disciplinary power, before that power is used. The court said plainly that neither the dismissal letter nor the conciliation hearing afterwards does this job, because both come once the decision is taken.

It is the disciplinary route the judgment decides. Whether the same requirement reaches the objective route is not something the judgment answers, and this page will not fill that in.

What follows from skipping it is not settled. The court applied the exception on the facts in front of it and sent the case back, so it never reached the question. Practitioners read the consequence as improcedencia, the unfair-dismissal outcome the next section prices, and that is their reading rather than the court's holding.

For dismissals before the judgment was published the court held the exception applied, because employers had been acting on the opposite doctrine and could not reasonably be asked to have done otherwise. That is about the past rather than about anything happening now.

The same Convention does two different jobs on this page. The court has refused to use it to award more than the tariff below, and has used it to require the hearing above.

What it gives you is narrow and real. If a performance case is heading down the disciplinary route, there is now a step before the letter that did not exist before, and a dated note of whether you were given a chance to answer, and what you said, is a fact worth keeping whichever way the plan goes.

The 33-day tariff is a price list

If a dismissal is ruled improcedente — unfair — the employer chooses between reinstating you and paying the tariff: 33 days per year of service, capped at 24 months. Service before 12 February 2012 accrues at 45 days a year under transitional rules, which matters for long tenure.

The Supreme Court has closed the door on more. Two 2024 and 2025 plenary judgments hold that judges cannot award above the tariff on the basis of ILO Convention 158 or the European Social Charter. Exceptions remain only for nulidad — a violation of fundamental rights — and for improvements agreed in a collective agreement.

The politics are not closed. The European Committee of Social Rights has found Spain's capped tariff inadequate, and in June 2026 the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers gave Spain until June 2028 to report on reforms. No bill has passed. The number above is the current law.

What this means in practice is that Spanish exit negotiations anchor on the 33-day figure, and employers frequently price unfairness in from the start rather than litigate the cause. One practitioner synthesis of 2024 ministry data reports 171,258 individual disciplinary dismissals with compensation, averaging around €7,909 — disciplinary dismissals legally carrying zero severance, paid anyway. That is the settlement market. (It is a reported figure describing past cases, not a figure to expect, and the file behind this page records that it is single-source and could not be re-read at the ministry.)

Resigning is the expensive move

A dismissal of any type, including a disciplinary one, preserves your entitlement to unemployment benefit, given the contribution history. Resignation forfeits it. So does a plain mutual-agreement exit that is not papered as a dismissal.

Hence a Spanish market artifact with its own name: the despido disciplinario falso, an exit deliberately papered as a dismissal so the worker keeps their paro. Whatever deal is reached, the paper has to say dismissal. The benefit page has the finiquito, the mutual-agreement case and the clock.

Twenty business days, and it starts sooner than you think

You have 20 business days to challenge a dismissal, and the clock is one of caducidad — it expires rather than merely lapsing. It runs from the day after the dismissal, not from the day you decide to do something about it, and Saturdays, Sundays and court holidays do not count. The mandatory conciliation filing is the step that has to land inside that window, and making it pauses the clock, but only until the conciliation is attempted, or fifteen business days after you filed if it has not been held by then, whichever comes first. Miss the window and the challenge is gone. The deadlines page puts it beside every other clock the guide covers.

Two more points on paperwork:

• The dismissal letter must set out detailed facts. Defects push it toward improcedencia.
• Do not sign the finiquito as a settlement of claims on the spot. Standard practitioner advice is to sign it as received, or annotate no conforme, and ask for the breakdown in writing.

What makes a case nulo rather than merely unfair

Nullity means reinstatement and back pay, not a tariff. The triggers are pregnancy and family-leave windows, discrimination, and the garantía de indemnidad — a dismissal retaliating against a worker who exercised a legal right. If your plan arrived shortly after a complaint, a leave or a claim, that sequence is worth recording precisely.

Region and collective agreement change the procedure

Fairhanded is not a law firm. Spanish procedure varies by region and by collective agreement, and the reform of dismissal compensation is a live political question. Where your situation turns on a legal question, take it to a Spanish abogado laboralista — and do it inside the 20-day window rather than after informal talks have run on.